The
wickedly sharp “Onion” recently introduced Americans to Cooter Obama,
Barack’s lovable “Hillbilly
Half-Brother.” “The overalls-clad, straw-chewing Kentuckian,” who
had dropped out of “chicken-killing school because an air conditioner
fell on his head,” was not shy of “chasing his troublemaking pig, Mbogo,
in the nude in the background of Obama’s CNN interview on the importance
of education.”

As you
can well imagine, Cooter’s colorful antics at Obama rallies did not sit
well with the Illinois Senator and his campaign. Michelle didn’t much
care either for the Moonshine-brewing Cooter, whose childhood nickname
for her husband is “Ol’ Jelly Legs.”

Satire
aside, there is a Kenyan Cooter, only he isn’t half as happy-go-lucky as
his imaginary, American half-brother. According to the Daily Telegraph,
George Hussein Onyango Obama is the youngest of the presidential
candidate’s half-brothers, sired by Barack Hussein Obama Sr., Obama’s
late father, and a woman named Jael. He lives in a corrugated shack in
the shanty town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.

The
26-year-old George Obama subsists on less than a dollar a month. By the
looks of his
three-meter dwelling,” Brother Barrack and that Sister of Mercy
Michelle have not lent a helping hand. The two had met with George
during a visit to Africa they embarked on with their daughters two years
back. About his meeting with Barack, George Obama noted: “It was like
meeting a complete stranger.”

To his
great credit, George Obama is a proud man, not a beggar. Although
manifestly in need, he has not asked for a hand-out from the brother who
valorizes the power of hand-outs … from the State, that is. About the
couple’s paucity in private giving, Andrew Breitbart writes this: “Mr.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, have consistently fallen short of the
national average in charitable contributions since they entered the
highest income bracket.”

Odd that
is, because during her schmaltzy speech at the Democratic National
Convention, Michelle Obama dogmatically recited the need to transform
“the world as it is” to “the world as it should be.” She and her husband
have been working on a central plan to better the world. Alas, changing
George Obama’s fortunes is not in the blueprints. (How about some
ill-fitting hand-me-downs, at least?)

As hard
as it is to lend spiritual credibility to Michelle’s hubristic
insolence, those with messianic complexes like hers might contemplate
the Jewish concept of tikkun olam. It sounds grandiose—it means
repairing the world—but it was intended as a humble and modest thing. It
is the duty of the individual to help, bit-by-bit, to bring about a
better world through unassuming, day-to-day righteous acts.

The idea
of charity is to improve society, not the State; and to do so through
personal, not political, acts.

The
story of Obama’s destitute sibling broke in Italy, England and Australia
before the American “parrot press” was willing to run with it. When it
finally aired in the US, tight-lipped TV front men and women presented
footage of George Obama as though he were some exotic exhibit,
unconnected to his flesh-and-blood brother. If there was a lesson about
Barack Obama in the interstices of George’s sad story, Obama’s followers
were unwilling to ferret it out. Naturally, Obama was spared any
embarrassment.

The same
media characters recently gave Bush, their bête noire, an
undeserved and uncharacteristic break. All liberals ignored his
hypocrisy with respect to the conflict that roils Russia and Georgia.

Easily
one of the mind-boggling displays of the conflict was that of Bush
accusing Russia of “bullying and intimidation”; of Bush admonishing
Russia about its unacceptable “way of conducting foreign policy in the
21st Century”; of Bush expressing “grave concern” about Russia’s
“disproportionate response”; and of Bush condemning the violation of the
territorial integrity of a sovereign nation.

Pot.
Kettle. Black: Bush may have been addressing Russia but he was also
describing his actions in Iraq. Another of Bush’s Freudian projections
and hypocrisies all rolled into one was to charge Russia with pursuing
“a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”

Since
the clash in Georgia is one neoconservatives and liberals can get
behind, both factions–and their quislings and collaborators in the
media–chose to ignore Bush’s latest burlesque.

On a
less glum note, by my calculation, the friendly (fictional) Cooter Obama
would probably part with a dead chicken and a flask for George Obama
sooner than Barack could be parted from his cash.